Quoting: areamanplaysgame

Quoting: slaapliedjeIt's funny that people keep saying 'OMG, only like 2%!' but when you factor in the total amount of video game players on the planet... that 2% becomes A LOT!

It's not 2% of the total amount of video game players on the planet. It's 2% of PC game players buying games through Steam. That's a much smaller pool. And even so, it means approximately 98% of Steam customers are not in that category. So it doesn't make much sense to say, "We're not going to let 98% of our customers play [huge game many people want] unless the other 2% can also play it."

Steam has 120 million monthly active users.
62.6 million people use Steam on a daily basis.
The Steam catalog in the US includes 50,361 games.
Steam users logged 31.3 billion hours of playtime in 2020.
PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS holds the record for the most concurrent Steam players, peaking at 3.26M.

Still a decent chunk. The thing that always makes me laugh is that these tiny indie studios that are literally occasionally one dude making a game in their spare time... yet can supply a native Linux build. But the larger studios whine that it's too hard/expensive. When most of them generally just snag either the Unreal or Unity engine...

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: wit_as_a_riddleThe amount of work they've done in a month is very impressive. It annoys me to no end when I see people posting on reddit about how "astonishing" it is when they don't have this feature or how exceedingly disappointed they are then it doesn't have that feature. Follow that up with "I really can't believe that this isn't fixed by now" when the device has been out for a month! Enough hyperbole, they are making improvements constantly, how about a pat on the back and a feature request rather than shitting all over them?

Most people expect a pat on the back for their efforts, but they rarely return the favor unfortunately. I'm working on some open source software that I'm hesitant to release as I don't know how I'll react to ungrateful people... May make me just give up as that's just how I am. It can really make someone sick when you spend not hours but months or years and have people be toxic. Big props to the open source developers that keep going while being insulted and bullied by ungrateful users.

P.S. I realize there's a difference between suggestions / constructive criticism and just plain bitching.

Just do what Microsoft does. Ignore everyone that tells you your software sucks, and just do what makes you happy.

(like that? I get to throw in a dig about MS while also giving sound advice!)

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanualI'm not sure what you mean by "because it doesn't follow the system libraries, you could end up with explouted versions if the Flatpak isn't updated." But it doesn't follow system libraries for a reason: if it did that, the software would break. There is old software that simply can't be run with current system libraries and needs older dependencies, which without something like Flatpak, is a lot harder to get running.

I have yet to run into any old software that wouldn't run by installing the libstdc compat package. That is pretty much the one. Hell, even old Loki titles have updated installers that will work on modern distros.

Personally, I would rather something stop working than to have libraries that would open your system to assholes. Anyhow, it is just the biggest con of the sandbox images, and doesn't usually pertain to open source stuff as someone can patch those... more about a comment on old proprietary software.

My biggest complaints, as I said, are more about terrible use of space, not cleaning up out of date libraries, and breaking integration with other apps (in the same way iOS walls off programs so they can't share the same data store.) An example of this is installing the new Gnome Text editor out of flatpak... pulls in the gnome platform 42. But if you no longer need 42 (like say when 43 comes out), 42 will remain installed and unused...

I accidentally found out I had three nvidia drivers installed in there... be ause of GreenEnvy needing one...

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: slaapliedjeFlatpak is another in a long line of 'we don't want to manage packaging for multiple distributions' solutions. There have been installer type things for ages in Linux that work the same way as Windows. Flatpaks are a little more similar to how Macs package things.

Downsides are that the sandboxing can break integration (like Discord with Steam), or Lutris with its wmulators. Another one is because it doesn't follow the system libraries, you could end up with explouted versions if the Flatpak isn't updated. Which has always been an issue with bundled software. They also take up a lot more disk.

Don't get me wrong, I quite like flatpaks, but the Cons definitely all need to be listed. AppImages have similar issues, but have also been around quite some time, and act more like the 'Mac Way'.

Note that I said "or something like it". I prefer AppImages, personally, but the Flatpak package I tried worked fine. Better than my distribution's package, which was broken for several weeks.

You mention other "installer type things", but I'm assuming you're referring to .sh install scripts. These are not really the same thing as Windows or macOS. For one thing, depending on how they're implemented, they may not solve the dependency issue at all. They're also often difficult to uninstall and create havoc on the user's system. Flatpak and AppImage are not like this.

I listed these cons in the comment you quoted, namely "Flatpaks can introduce issues that didn't exist before due to its complex nature", and "Storage space is less of an issue the more Flatpak software you install." Of course, you can end up with multiple versions of libraries which Flatpak can't de-duplicate due to compatibility issues, but then, your options are "don't run it at all" or "use more disk space".

I'm not sure what you mean by "because it doesn't follow the system libraries, you could end up with explouted versions if the Flatpak isn't updated." But it doesn't follow system libraries for a reason: if it did that, the software would break. There is old software that simply can't be run with current system libraries and needs older dependencies, which without something like Flatpak, is a lot harder to get running.

A downside I forgot to mention is that because Flatpaks duplicate system libraries if they are installed by your distribution's package manager, you will end up with more memory usage because multiple versions of the libraries are running at once. There's not much that can be done about this one. It's a similar issue to storage space, but potentially more impactful.

If you're interested in reading an article written by someone who completely disagrees with my arguments: https://drewdevault.com/2021/09/27/Let-distros-do-their-job.html [External Link]

Though this advice isn't going to work for projects that have a long legacy and just aren't easy to build. Arch and almost every other distribution has stopped bothering to package Anki for the past 2 years because it's too much work. Where is the user left? Follow the developer's advice to install it through pip?

I'm not saying that Flatpak should replace distribution-built packages. I'm saying they should co-exist.

For installers, look at the ones GOG has for Linux, or the Loki Linux Installer, etc. They are almost identical to Windows installers.

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Quoting: pete910

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: cazzooTo answer this one, Playnite is kind of the same, but dedicated to Windows AFAIK. Lutris goes even further, allowing to play windows games in linux leveraging Wine builds. There are some contributors helping to keep updated version of wine fully compatible with Lutris, embeding all latest changes from Proton, Proton GE and Wine.

I always thought Lutris just used various versions of Wine, like PlayOnLinux does, and then the community tweaks installer scripts so that installs work correctly. Last I checked they didn't use Proton at all.

They do however, you can use proton with Lutris fine. Proton-GE has been compiled for both Steam and Luris use. Just a case of installing the relevant runner that you need.

Edit:

https://github.com/gloriouseggroll/wine-ge-custom [External Link]

This is my build of WINE based on/forked from the most recent bleeding-edge proton experimental wine repo. This is meant to be used with non-steam games outside of Steam.

Sweet, will have to try that.
Also, Debian Sid already has it.

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Quoting: const

Quoting: GuestI quite enjoyed Wheel of Time, and was reminded of it recently from the "tv" series adaptation (which I also enjoyed). Not yet read any of the books. Safe to say that I'll be snagging that one. I know it doesn't have a native version, but for games that old I'm not exactly expecting it. That's what I use wine for.

Had you read the books (it's the most epic saga I've ever read), you probably wouldn't have enjoyed the series. It's a horrible adaption, yet it seems like it might not come of as horrible without the reference. :D
So, don't read the books until you finished the series or just switch completely. But be aware it's a long saga (~20000 pages iirc) with very detailed descriptions.

Ha, I read the first book, asked my friends how many books there were (at the time 7 was the answer) and I responded with "He is going to die before he finishes the story..."

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Quoting: GuestWish someone would sell me James Bond 007: Nightfire and The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II. :unsure:

I still have my Battle for Middle Earth collection that has the two of them. I think the last time I tried them in Wine, they failed, and I believe that in Win10 they are broken.

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Looks like Debian Sid already has 5.10. Yay! Time to play around with it.

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanualFlatpak tackles some long-standing distribution issues with GNU/Linux. It's not perfect, but something like it needs to exist in the future in order to deal with these problems that simply don't exist on macOS or Windows.

The downsides are that a lot of developers don't maintain their own Flatpak packages (or one doesn't exist at all), the sandbox is flawed, Flatpaks can introduce issues that didn't exist before due to its complex nature, it may be slower (at least in startup time), and the syntax for the package manager is just not as good as Pacman. Storage space is less of an issue the more Flatpak software you install.

Flatpak is another in a long line of 'we don't want to manage packaging for multiple distributions' solutions. There have been installer type things for ages in Linux that work the same way as Windows. Flatpaks are a little more similar to how Macs package things.

Downsides are that the sandboxing can break integration (like Discord with Steam), or Lutris with its wmulators. Another one is because it doesn't follow the system libraries, you could end up with explouted versions if the Flatpak isn't updated. Which has always been an issue with bundled software. They also take up a lot more disk.

Don't get me wrong, I quite like flatpaks, but the Cons definitely all need to be listed. AppImages have similar issues, but have also been around quite some time, and act more like the 'Mac Way'.

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Quoting: cazzooTo answer this one, Playnite is kind of the same, but dedicated to Windows AFAIK. Lutris goes even further, allowing to play windows games in linux leveraging Wine builds. There are some contributors helping to keep updated version of wine fully compatible with Lutris, embeding all latest changes from Proton, Proton GE and Wine.

I always thought Lutris just used various versions of Wine, like PlayOnLinux does, and then the community tweaks installer scripts so that installs work correctly. Last I checked they didn't use Proton at all.

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